‘De Eetclub’ Series Is Better Than the Film, and Better Than the Book

Poor Evert. Completely dead. The firefighters found him too late to save him, and people say he set his own house on fire, with Babette and their two children inside. It is a shocking accusation against a man everyone describes as a loving husband and father.

That contradiction drives Karin through De Eetclub, the new Netflix series based on Saskia Noort’s bestselling 2004 thriller. The story of a doomed group of friends in an affluent villa neighborhood has already appeared in a 2010 film, which changed the ending and received considerably less enthusiasm. Noort herself said at the premiere that she preferred her own ending.

The series gives the story a more effective structure. Much of it unfolds through police interrogations, as members of the dinner club recount what happened to Evert and, later, another case. From the opening scene, the format makes the purpose and urgency clear: a mystery needs to be solved.

Each of the seven episodes offers part of the story from a different club member’s perspective, excluding Evert. The group has also been reduced from ten people to eight, removing several characters who added little and making the remaining cast easier to follow. They are still not especially layered, the review says, but they feel more alive than they did in the book or film. Karin and her husband Michiel receive the most striking character overhaul.

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That’s what they say. That he set his own house on fire.